Waatea News Column – National Party meltdown (the questions that need asking)

No one is coming out of this unscathed but it has cemented into place Jacinda’s call for a politics of kindness, because the politics of anger and spite serves no master other than discord and implosion.

Folks, I’ve been following politics for almost a quarter of a century, and I’ve never seen anything like the recent events that have engulfed the National Party.

But before even beginning to decipher the multi-faceted political, cultural and societal aspects of Jami-Lee Ross’s extraordinary allegations, anonymous harassment accusations, National Party response and him now being sanctioned into mental health care, let’s acknowledge the immense pain, harm and trauma the family friends and whanau who have been dragged into this terrible implosion are suffering.

Because beyond politics, this is what it this appalling abuse has become. A naked, endless, ever growing suffering on a national level of attention that is exacerbated a million times by social media commentary and outrage.

Some compassion and empathy needs to be handed out to every one here from the accused to the accusers while critical scrutiny will need to be applied to the appalling manner in which the National Party hierarchy has behaved in all aspects of this.

There are so many questions that have yet to be answered or even asked.

The way the National Party leadership thinks about ethnic diversity

The level of influence over our largest political party from China.

Whether donations need to be publicly funded.

Why and how the National Party promoted JLR despite harassment and bullying allegations.

Is it appropriate for media to publish damning accusations from anonymous sources?

What else was going to be revealed inside National?

How safe are the safeguards when suddenly sanctioning a sitting Member of Parliament into mental health care when they are threatening to destabilise a Party.

How do we treat mental health in the public sphere without triggering or being censored by triggering

Dragging families into political wars seems unnecessarily harmful

How do we debate and disagree with one another without reducing it to vitriol?

The toxicity being exposed within National suggests a Party that is paralysed by rage while simultaneously juggling questions about harassment and bullying the wider community is tearing itself to pieces over.

Making a murky situation even more difficult to define is the role of Dirty Politic Agents and surrogates whose political philosophy is chaos and mayhem and whom surround every player in this bonfire.

Families are being humiliated, people being hurt and reputations shredded, and it’s still not really clear what any of this is for or about.

No one is coming out of this unscathed but it has cemented into place Jacinda’s call for a politics of kindness, because the politics of anger and spite serves no master other than discord and implosion.

The crisis and cultural malaise at our political, societal and cultural core requires building up, not tearing down.

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Now that the warning that Winston Peters had sent us at the time of his joining the labour coalition, when he warned that “soon the beginning of GFC would come” is now finally here; – so how are we going to cope with the ‘reliance of cheap money’ from China?

China freely prints free money for it’s own global investments and we are now addicted to their money.

CLEANGREEN China does NOT create NZD, it creates Renmibi, their national currency which is denominated in Yuan. NO ONE can spend Yuan in New Zealand, Yuan will be as useful in NZ domestic market as tits on a bull.

NZDs are created by the NZ government, it’s the ONLY source of NZD in the whole visible universe. No countries on earth can issue NZD. Whenever the NZ government need to buy anything that is for sale in NZD – tertiary education, infrastructures, health services, social houses – it just instructs the Reserve Bank of New Zealand via the Treasury to credit the required amount of NZDs in the appropriate reserves accounts at the Reserve Bank.

We need to begin to care about each other again as the saying goes; – “Courtesy is contagious” as we used to get a bumper sticker put on our cars back in the 1960’s to change the arrogance of driving then and it worked so we need to do this to our everyday life now.

Well our PM needs to back up her call of kindness and take a strong stand on saudi arabia we can’t have them being allowed to savagely murder someone in a consulate where people are suppose to be safe. and this not a show of kindness, it is hate, power control and a human rights issue. This vicious act sets a very bad precedent and if we allow this to be swept under the carpet this will become the ‘norm’. As I have mentioned before we are very quick to lock up NZers for much lesser crimes. We should not be trading with people like this we need to start looking for other countries to trade with to replace the saudi trade deals we have. The saudis seem to think they can do what ever they want to who ever they want and so far they have got away with it let see what pans out and which country is gonna get some guts and stand up to these people.

Yes we need to stand up to the saudis friend to( Red Buzzard) many are selling arms and in my view are hypocrites by ignoring human rights in favour of lucrative trade deals, this is too high a trade of. We have taken a stand before and we need to do it again.

Err Michelle you have heard about Yemen haven’t you? A huge outcry for one person’s murder, little or no reporting on the outrageous war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia supported by our and their allies; USA, UK wrecking havoc on the poorest nation in Africa. 100,000s killed through the war, starvation and disease. And Ardern is still do her bit to placate our allies re the Skripal case and continuing to send our troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s entrenched our position as vassal state of the US. Kindness? what about integrity?

5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”

6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”

8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”

9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”

10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”

12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

They basically say far better than I ever could what I thought the problem with all this is. Their demolition of the problems are comprehensive — they take everything on in detail. I encourage you to read the whole article.

I’m not going to pretend that committals and interventions and back room deals are a panacea to mental health, but they do need help. Some people might be triggered by this suggestion, because depression is a serious problem right now and being depressed to the point of wanting to self harm is obviously a very big deal, so speaking about the inner workings of the National Party Machine — that maybe they’ll feel better if they took a sleeping pill and stop talking so much can almost be taken as an attempt to trivialize their issues, but it’s really not.

The Jami-Lee Ross/National Party meltdown is a direct consequence of the “Dirty Politics” as laid bare in Hager’s book four years ago. Ross is a protege of Lusk’s and Slater’s; he has learned from them the modus operandi and the inherent values system that must be adopted if you are going to behave this way. The problem for his puppet masters, is that when you factor in Ross’s personal character as well as the wild card of mental illness, the potential exists for chaos to ensue which goes far beyond what might have been expected. “Dirty Politics” operated out of the Prime Minister’s office. The toxic situation that the National party finds itself in now, is John Key’s true legacy.

… [ Families are being humiliated, people being hurt and reputations shredded, and it’s still not really clear what any of this is for or about.

No one is coming out of this unscathed but it has cemented into place Jacinda’s call for a politics of kindness, because the politics of anger and spite serves no master other than discord and implosion ] …

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Mr Bradbury , you are too kind.

You would not do well on the battlefield, I’m afraid. You would be the medic wanting to patch up combatants on both sides. Like Hawkeye on M*A*S*H.

‘Stop the bombing !!!,- this has gone on long enough !!!”…

But we are involved in a war for this country, and have been since 1984. It is a war that takes no prisoners, in which our opponents have little regard for the massacre of the innocents , the children or for cohesion of society in general. It is brutal , barbaric , devoid of compassion.

It is the war on neo liberalism.

The chief political party and prodigy that has emerged from the ashes of 1984’s 4th Labour govt is National. ACT has been silenced, .. and it has been left by and large to National to carry on the neo liberal baton.

And now, belatedly , after 35 years of neo liberal treason, we are witnessing an internecine war in that party. They have started turning on themselves. And just as their ideology justified vicious brutality on others , they are now using it against each other.

In the book of Tacitus, that Roman general observed two German tribes decimating each other in Romes war against the Germanic tribes. The writer penned with exuberance that Romes enemy’s were destroying one another, – despite one tribe being allies of Rome. And as we all know , later on Rome was to use that same malignant attitude in its own civil wars on each other.

So it was and so it is with National. We cannot staunch the flow for the family’s and the innocents. They are what the Americans label ‘ collateral damage’. And any ancient or modern general goes to great lengths to sow discord and division against his foes and their allies.

The neo liberals have subjugated and oppressed the people of NZ for far too long as it is. They have occupied and stolen what does not belong to them. We have tried to be nice.

And that hasn’t worked.

Let them fight. Let them expend their energy’s on their own self destruction, even encourage them to do so. They waged war on us first. Let them finish themselves. Sadly this DOES affect their family’s and that is a sad sight to see, – but does add weight to the notion that for them , … family’s come a poor second.

This is just who they are.

Think of that the next time you are tempted to have pity on them ,- and think also of so many family’s who, – while holding down two jobs, – STILL have to live in cars.

Let the vicious neo liberals fight and destroy one another. It saves the rest of us much wasted energy and precious time.

From muddy waters do swamp creatures emerge – maybe the culture of National has been so toxic that this was almost inevitable. For instance, why would two National supporting women have sex with him if he was so abhorrent? Why was he National Whip if he was so horrible. People must have known what he was like. Look at all the unpleasant people who were ministers under John Key. All that seems to be different is the lack of finesse in being horrible that the Key government was so adept at

This from the NZ Herald bothers me. I’ve always thought that Exclusive Brethren, Jehovahs and 7th day Adventists were mentally unbalanced and if this Herald report is true it seems that Slater and Ross are in bed with them, something unnoticed or deliberately under-reported by the MSM

“Those who know Slater believe the man he called “like a second father” was Honnor, the wealthy businessman, who has a home on Paritai Drive, would hold weekly prayer meetings at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Manukau, which Ross and Slater attended at the same time.”